'Moussa Sadr abduction, US-Zionist plot'

A member of Lebanese Amal Movement has described the abduction of Lebanon's Shia cleric Imam Moussa al-Sadr as a deliberate ploy by the United States and international Zionism.

Khalil Hamdan, who headed a delegation representing the Amal Movement, told reporters in the Iranian capital of Tehran that the US and 'Zionists' used Libya's fugitive ruler Muammar Gaddafi to implement the ploy in order to undermine the Lebanese movement, IRNA reported on Monday.Â

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Sadr, the founder of Lebanon's Amal Movement, was a popular and highly revered Lebanese Shia cleric of Iranian descent that disappeared on August 31, 1978 while visiting Libya.Â

Hamdan further made reference to Sadr's endeavors to illuminate and spread the values of the Islamic Revolution and noted that Imam Moussa had elaborated on the point in his last article before his abduction.Â

Accompanied by two of his companions, Mohammed Yaqoub and Abbas Badreddin, Sadr was scheduled to meet with officials from the then government of Gaddafi.Â

At the time, Libyan authorities claimed that the Iranian-born influential cleric and his associates had boarded a flight to Rome, Italy. However, Italian officials said the three men were never found on the plane.Â

Born in the Iranian city of Qom, Sadr went to Lebanon in 1959 to work for the civil rights of Shias in the southern city of Tyre. In 1974, a year before Lebanon's 15-year civil war broke out, he founded the Movement of the Deprived, attracting thousands of followers.Â

In 1975, Sadr founded Amal, the first major resistance and political force for Lebanon's Shias, who were historically under the rule of Christians and Sunnis.Â

Most of Sadr's followers are convinced that Gaddafi ordered his assassination in a dispute over Libyan payments to Lebanese groups, but the Imam's family argues he could still be alive in a Libyan jail.Â

In 2008, the Lebanese government issued an arrest warrant for Gaddafi over Sadr's disappearance.Â

Lebanon has recognized Libya's Transitional National Council (TNC), saying it would work with "emerging authorities" in the North African country to uncover the fate of the missing cleric.Â